The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) today decided to focus on critical issues like governance, faculty and funding to make its mark in the world as one of the premier management institutes.

Following a meeting in Bangalore with directors and chairpersons of all the IIMs, union minister for Human Resources and Development (HRD), Kapil Sibal, said three groups would be constituted to look into these issues and provide long-term solutions.

The groups would be headed by eminent people from the industry like Maruti Suzuki India chairman RC Bhargava. The IIMs have also been asked to submit reports on existing strategies to tackle these issues for the next five years and suggest long-term goals. The reports are to be submitted to the MHRD by May end.

"Right now there are some roadblocks in governance.We will look into efficient functioning, empowering directors, board of directors, appointing chairpersons, issues of accountability, role of the board and relationship between faculty and the board," Sibal told reporters.

He said the faculty plays an important role and collective effort would go into studying the nature of research at the IIMs and how it should focus on emerging economies. He said recruitment and flexibility of faculty, contract employment of guest faculty and their remuneration would form the basis of the reports.

Sibal admitted that funding the IIMs was a concern. "It is difficult to keep increasing endowments (for IIMs) because their demands are multifarious. IIMs should source money from their alumni, the business community and the industry," he said.

The ministry is toying with the idea of employing professional institutional management help for the exercise since it is difficult for academicians to do it. Some rules regarding alumni contributions going directly to the corpus could also undergo a change.

In the meeting, the IIMs also agreed they should publish an international quality journal like the Harvard Business Review that would help them benchmark their global standards.

When asked about autonomy, Sibal said none of the IIMs complained about autonomy anymore. "We want to give more autonomy but with more accountability," he said.

It was decided that if there was a fee hike it would be within the reach of the students. "We do not want a family to sell their silverware in order to educate their children," said Sibal.